Matt was presently angry because, in his words, ‘Elektra, that fiend, had gotten there first.’
What this translated to in real-person speak was that Elektra had turned back up in the city about two weeks ago with all that hair, a whole new oni mask, and a new body at her side.
And Matt was furious.
“He’s supposed to be my apprentice,” he threatened Foggy, as though he’d had anything to do with this at all.
“I think,” Foggy said delicately, “That he’s meant to be Daredevil’s apprentice, darling. And you, peaches, are not Daredevil.”
Matt was, however, practically purple.
“I’m going to kill her,” he decided.
Yeah, Foggy would love to see him try.
“Mr. Nelson.”
“Hello, Gwen,” he said patiently, tapping his stack of papers into a neat block before setting them into the ‘out’ box on his desk.
“We have a DD?” Gwen asked.
He looked up across the room at her gangly white form. She seemed to legitimately be in shock.
“So it would seem,” he said.
Gwen’s mask eyes were nearly as wide as they could go.
“Is she nice?” she asked.
Mmmm. Define ‘nice.’
“She is very good at what she does,” he said diplomatically.
“You know her?”
He laughed.
Elektra very tenderly fought through a hoard of men in the courtyard in front of Foggy’s office. When he arrived in the morning to pandemonium, he decided that this was a sign that she wanted to chat.
As if summoned by the thought alone, she appeared that night on the walk home with her Sam bopping along after her.
“He’s a bit young, don’t you think?” Foggy pointed out without looking up at Elektra.
“Found him in Hong Kong,” she noted, light and silky smooth as ever. “Acrobat. Formerly trafficked. Can you believe?”
Actually, he could.
“How’d you get him here?” he asked.
Elektra laughed.
“Why, we boarded a plane, of course.”
Hm.
“On paper, he’s mine.”
What. Seriously?
“When I commit, I commit, darling,” she purred.
Well, that was certainly the truth. Foggy stopped and she stopped with him. He finally looked up. The kid wasn’t paying attention; he missed the memo, crashed into Elektra’s hip, and fell right off the fence.
“We’re working on it,” she said smoothly at the resulting yelp.
Oh, honey. For his sake, Foggy hoped they were.
“This is your uncle, Sammy,” Elektra told the tiny version of Big Red’s Sam with a fond hand on his shoulder. “Your big, red uncle. Like Clifford the dog. You remember Clifford?”
Matt nearly shook with rage.
Sammy hid behind Elektra’s waist.
“This. Is. Bullshit,” Matt grated out.
“Oh,” Elektra gushed, “So you’ve heard?”
“I fucking hate you,” Matt snarled.
“I was surprised to find out, too, lovely. Who’d have ever imagined that you would be the white knight in every other dimension, hm?” Elektra’s smile could have drawn blood, it was so sharp.
“My apprentice,” she snapped. “Get your own.” She paused. “Or.”
“Get the fuck out before I make you,” Matt snarled.
“You could, of course—”
“I’m giving you a five second head start.”
“Leave behind all that ire—”
“One.”
“All that anger, Matthew. It must be so heavy to carry around.”
“Two.”
“Remember when we were kids? With Stick? Remember when you were—”
“Three.”
“—good? You could be good again, Matthew. We could be good together.”
“Four,” Matt gritted out like he had leather trapped between his teeth. Elektra leaned forward and her loose hair slipped down over her shoulders.
“We could be Daredevil,” she whispered.
Matt half-pivoted purposefully and put his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“Run,” he ordered.
Foggy wasn’t 100% how he got stuck on apprentice-sitting duty, but he hated it. This kid was so close to tipping over into tears that he was making Foggy himself want to cry.
“It’s okay, buddy,” he said. “Sensei is gonna be just fine. She’s got Matt as a launchpad if she needs one.”
The boy made a soft sound like he was dying.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
Okay. Switch headspaces. DA Nelson’s reasoning wasn’t working here. What would Foggy, favorite uncle of 90% of all under 18s in the Nelson family brood, do?
“Do you—do you like Spiderwoman?” he asked. The sniffing settled somewhat. Sammy nodded. His oni mask jostled as he did.
“Well,” Foggy said dramatically, “Have I got a treat for you, then.”
“THIS IS AN OUTRAGE,” Matt announced upon entering Foggy’s apartment with Elektra wrangling him and saying soothing things over him.
Gwen gave him the prissiest look she could muster and pulled Sammy all the way into her lap. He was confused but didn’t pause for too long. There was sticky web to play with.
“WHO SANCTIONED THIS?” Matt roared, throwing a violent hand at the sin against God occurring at the foot of Foggy’s couch.
It was pretty obvious, honestly. Foggy didn’t know if he was just too emotional to process thought at the moment or if he’d gotten his head smashed in at some point during the night. Elektra helped the situation by getting in front of him and making shushing noises and elongated soothing gestures far too close to his face.
“You look great in red,” Gwen threw out at his back.
He nearly lunged for her.
“THIS,” he snarled pointing aggressively to the oni mask he’d tossed up upon entering the house, “Is a one time only event.”
Elektra popped her eyebrows up upon finally recognizing Gwen.
“Oh, wow,” she said. “You’re Spiderwoman.”
Gwen went stiff.
“I am,” she said.
Elektra’s mask was black to match Matt’s red one. She peeled it the rest of the way up and shoved him violently over so that she could step over to Gwen and offer a hand down to her.
“Sammy loves you,” she said. “It’s great to meet you. They call me Daredevil.”
Gwen stood up and brought Sammy with her. She set him down, and he took one look at Matt’s rage posture and hunkered down into his shoulders like he wanted to hiss. He ducked out of range to Elektra’s other side.
He was a smart boy with stunning instincts.
“You’re amazing,” Gwen said, catching and shaking Elektra’s hand. “Like, incredible. Just in the last two weeks, everything’s gone so quiet on this side of town. Are you sticking around?”
Elektra hummed and looked over at Matt. She rubbed her lips together.
“Mmm. Not sure yet. I was mostly just looking for someone, who very rudely left Japan without so much as a text,” she said.
Matt bared his teeth at her.
“I don’t text,” he growled.
“You should,” Elektra noted. “Modern ways of communication and all that.”
Foggy could just about take Matt’s pulse from where he was standing two yards away. Elektra ignored the start of his next retort to turn back to Gwen.
“When Matthew is ready to stop wasting his talent on scum that doesn’t deserve it, I could probably find it in myself to stick around these parts, but until then, unfortunately, I’m afraid my business is confined to affairs along the Pacific coasts. We’re just here for a quick visit, aren’t we, munchkin?”
Sam didn’t answer, so Elektra repeated the question in Japanese and he apparently picked up more of that and nodded.
Matt made a sound of frustration.
“You can’t talk to him like that,” he groaned into his hands.
“Why not?” Elektra demanded.
“He’s not your kid, he’s your apprentice.”
“He’s my kid, too,” Elektra snapped. “We have a bedtime routine and everything. He can almost break my wrist. Want to see?”
This poor, poor child.
Matt went through a series of emotions with his hands and settled on unusual calm.
“You have to inculcate respect,” he said to Elektra seriously. “Fear is respect. Obedience is respect.”
Elektra stared at him.
“Anyways, he’s pretty good for a six-year-old—” she continued.
“He’s SIX? Are you out of your MIND?”
Gwen looked at Foggy with a face full of awe. Foggy shrugged.
Yes, this was how the two of them had communicated for as long as Foggy had known them. Yes, Elektra stomped on every single one of Matt’s nerves in the perfect place to make his composure a thing of dreams, fantasies, and freefall.
Yes, it was highly entertaining.
“Say bye to Uncle Foggy and Uncle Dickface,” Elektra instructed her charge on the way out. Sammy smiled at Foggy and gave a soft ‘bye.’ He scowled at Matt who mugged right back. Elektra apparently thought that this was appropriate behavior, seeing as she didn’t do anything to correct it.
“When you’re ready, Matthew,” she said. “I’ll be waiting. And if you join me, you might even have Sammy waiting for you one day, too.”
Sammy scowled and very purposefully pulled down his black oni mask to let Matt know not to hold his breath on that one.
Foggy did not laugh, but it was a close damn thing.
“Get fucked, I’m going to start a gang war,” Matt spat.
“We’ll be in the area for another week or so, Spiderwoman. Call me if you need anything,” Elektra said. “You’ve got my number, right? No? Foggy, give her my number. Thanks, boo-boo. Okay, away we go. Onwards!”
She and Sammy marched off into the night. Matt stormed over and slammed the door behind them.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go ruin her credit score,” he told Foggy. He glared more or less in Gwen’s direction over his shoulder. “Don’t you dare give this one her number, either.”
Gwen watched him make for the window for a more dramatic exit. The quiet that followed the sudden absence of angry red presence seemed unusually peaceful.
“I love her,” Gwen decided. “I want to be her.”
“She’s good for Matt,” Foggy agreed.
“She thinks she can make him stop kingpin-ing?” Gwen asked.
“She does indeed,” Foggy said. “They were together from the start of things, if I understand all this right. She broke through the Hand’s conditioning; she has faith that he can, too.”
Gwen seemed warmed by the thought.
“We could have two Daredevils,” she thought out loud. “Now that would get things moving and shaking around here.”
“We could have three Daredevils,” Foggy pointed out lightly. “Once Sammy gets big enough to do some real damage.”
Gwen stiffened a little at the thought.
“I need to tell Itsy,” she said. “I’ll catch you around, Mr. Nelson!”
Yes, indeed she would.